This was my first experience using Palladio and I found it to be quite frustrating to navigate. After experimenting with it for some time, I was able to look more closely at the connections between my colleagues’ choices and my own.
I quickly realized that looking at the data in this format allows for a surface level analysis. There is no reasoning behind why students did/did not choose particular pieces. Two individuals may have very different reasons for why they chose to include a particular musical piece.
In the Golden Record curation task, I chose to include sounds that portray the diversity of life and culture on earth. Through my exploration of other students’ blogs, I realized that many of us had a similar reasoning for our song choices. I noticed that this application placed me in a group with Greg and Erin. Upon closer examination, I saw that Greg and I had four songs in common and Erin and I had five songs in common. Greg chose to include songs that he could connect with. He mentioned that he felt he was judging one artist’s work over another without really any knowledge about a lot of these pieces. He also noted some of his personal preferences and biases when it comes to music. I think that it’s important to point out that these elements had effects on all of our song choices. Erin had similar ideas about her song choices for the Golden Record. Specifically, she spoke about Eurocentric bias. She took different parts of the world into account in the selection process.
I was curious to know what the most and least popular tracks were in the selection process. Track 3 (Percussion (Senegal) was the most popular track, but I hadn’t chosen this track. I began to think about why I hadn’t selected this song. I went back to listen to the track once again and I remembered that didn’t choose the song because the sounds didn’t appeal to me. I tried to select songs that evoked strong emotions and this track did not meet this criterion.
I also noticed that track 27 (String Quartet No. 13) was the least popular song. It appeared that only myself and one other student included this song in our selection. I wondered why Peter Jordan and I were the only ones who selected this track. After visiting his blog, I realized that he had chosen his songs at random. I chose this song because it appealed to my senses.
Jordan, P. (2021, March 7). Golden Record. Peter Jordan. https://blogs.ubc.ca/pjordanetec540/2021/03/07/golden-record/
Marranca, E. (2021, March 7). Task 8: Golden Record Curation. Erin Marranca. https://blogs.ubc.ca/marranca/2021/03/07/task-8-golden-record-curation/
Patton, G. (2021, March 7). Task Eight: Mixtape to the Stars!. Greg Patton. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540gregpatton/